Fallout 3: Two Weeks Later (Broken Steel)

Continuing past the dramatic events that ended the release version of Fallout 3, you can pick up with your character almost just as you had finished off. Awaking from a two week coma under the care of the Brotherhood of Steel, you discover that pure water is being processed and distributed across the Wasteland. However, there are remnants of the Enclave still out there, hindering progress as much as they can, and still at war with the Brotherhood.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assist the Brotherhood in taking out the last of the Enclave fighters. More often than not, it seems like you are the only person fighting on behalf of the Brotherhood, as you are given orders, but not a lot of help. Make sure to bring your best weapons and armor as you battle against Deathclaws, hordes of Enclave soldiers, and oodles of other dangerous enemies.

This new content for this Game of the Year allows you to increase the level of your character from 20 to 30, and includes numerous new Perks, some great new weapons and armor, and some new skill books. There are three new main story quests, and an additional three side quests that can be unlocked.

Unfortunately, Broken Steel has been somewhat “Broken” for me. I downloaded the first release of the content and played up through the end of the first quest. Achievement Unlocked popped up for me, however the achievement never registered. The next day I discovered that the content had been temporarily removed and re-uploaded to the Marketplace. Hoping it would fix my missing achievement issue, I removed the first download from my hard drive, cleared my 360′s memory cache, and redownloaded the content. Achievement never did properly register for me. Another DLC with another glitched achievement.

My second issue was with the first quest of the DLC. At a very climactic scene in this quest (lips sealed so as not to ruin it for anyone), there was an awful lot of action happening on the screen, which did cause a freeze. Not a huge deal, just more of an annoyance.

The worst of all annoyances/glitches/hair pulling moments came when I was traveling through the Presidential Metro tunnels and ran into some Feral Ghouls. The standard ghouls and the Glowing Ones were easily handled, but the Feral Ghoul Reavers were somehow near impossible to kill. Even while using V.A.T.S giving me a 95% hit ratio and using my Gauss Rifle which does about 70 plus damage, I could not seem to do any damage to them. It was a 20 minute battle with me facing three or four of these Reavers, and I depleted my 120 stimpack supply to less than 20 by the time I finally defeated them. Now this could have either been a major glitch or it could have had to do with adding stronger enemies to counter the increase in the level cap. Adding stronger enemies is understandable, but not when it leads to the experience that I had.

For me, the highlight of the new content was acquiring the Tesla Cannon, a gorgeous and extremely powerful weapon that continues to damage the target with electricity for a bit after the initial hit. I also picked up some Enclave Hellfire Armor and a Gatling Laser which would come in handy if I still had Super Mutant Behemoths to take down.

I managed to complete the DLC and the new sidequests at level 25, and now all there is for me is to wander the Wastelands looking for things to kill which will allow me to make my way up to level 30. I still believe this DLC should have been released before Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt so that we could have used all three new areas to reach level 30, and not become bored once we had completed everything else (like I am now). I definitely recommend that if you have not yet played the previous two DLC releases that you start with Broken Steel so you have the opportunity to benefit from the XP that they have to offer.

As a fan of the game, I have dealt with the previous download content containing some minor glitches, release delays, and content being pulled for days to be “fixed.” In my mind, pushing back content to say to you are working to make it as bug free as possible is a good thing. But I question just how much testing was done on non-360 development kits and how many people (and the quality of these testers) worked on making sure that I enjoyed my experience with this content.

I am not particularly happy that I spent the approximate $12 CDN (800MS Points) on content that clearly was not ready (once again) for the public. As much as I love Fallout 3, with all the issues I have had to deal with, I must say that I am finding that I am not enjoying my gaming experience as much as I should be. I really hope that Bethesda works on these issues and makes better attempts to correct them as soon as possible so that others do not run into the same issues as I have. I’ve now spent approximately $36 on additional gameplay that has become less enjoyable with each release.

You know, I don't even remember where the Dunwich Building is & I need to get back there.... I did notice a couple reavers glitching out during Broken Steel & tried to outrun them before they could do more damage.

I know this post is old but the reason the reavers were so difficult in the Metro is due to a glitch (have you noticed them spazzing out?). I had faced them in the Dunwich building and while they are difficult they are nowhere near as difficult as the ones in the Metro who have that invincibility glitch.